Aloha to Embo as Hawaiian couple make twinning visit
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Embo has welcomed its first visitors in years from the community it is twinned with in far-off Hawaii.
Bob and Kelly Takaya King of Maui County on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, squeezed in a quick visit to the seaside Sutherland village at the end of a trip to Glasgow for COP26.
The couple arrived last Friday and departed the following day. They stayed at Dornoch Castle Hotel and were shown round by Liz Robertson, a member of the Embo twinning committee, and her husband Struan.
Embo has been twinned with Kaunakakai, since the early 1990s following its famed Independence fundraiser. Kaunakakai is the largest town in Maui County.
The link was facilitated by an American couple Will and Hannah Johnstone who at that time lived between Dornoch and Kaunakakai.
There have been a previous two official visits to Embo from the twin community and a group of Hawaiian youngsters on a school trip also made an unofficial visit.
Mrs King is a member of Maui County Council and along with her husband runs Pacific BioDisel as well as sunflower and hemp farms.
She attended COP26 as a representative of the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLE), and spoke around 13 times during the climate conference fortnight
Mrs King said she had been unaware of the link with Embo until a colleague pointed it out to her as she was planning the UK trip. She was then determined to see the “sister city”.
She has been impressed with the village and surprised at the similarities between it and her homeland.
“It’s cold but I think it is beautiful - we went to look at the beach,” she said. Until we got here I didn’t realise the correlations and how similar they are - they are both small communities with issues trying to get a share of budget from state or federal government.”
Mr and Mrs Robertson, who travelled to Kaunakakai in 1997, took the Kings to visit Clynelish Distillery at Brora.
Mrs Robertson said: “I would have liked to have included the village and had a community get-together to mark their visit but couldn’t fit it in because of the short time scale.”
